As an Amazon Affiliate, it’s quite tricky to run your website and not get banned, because Amazon Affiliates Program has a set of rules that if broken can easily land you a ban.
Although it is explicitly mentioned in official page of Amazon program policies and guidelines, but to save you time reading that complex set of guidelines, I have summarized the major terms that must be followed to ensure you continue making money as Amazon Affiliate.
These are popular 10 mistakes that will instantly disable or Ban your Amazon Associates Account:
1. Sending Affiliate Links in an offline manner
Amazon explicitly bans sending affiliate links in any offline means of communication such as emails, E-books and PDFs. Using Amazon Affiliate links in emails and documents results in a ban asap! Nevertheless, if you still desire to make money from Amazon using emails; link to a page on your site that includes your Amazon Affiliate Links.
2. Amazon Affiliate Link Shortening or Link Obstruction
Amazon greatly stresses on not obscuring links that redirect users to Amazon sites. They want to ensure that the users can clearly see where the link is taking them to. Therefore, if you want to shorten any URLs then you can use Amazon’s own link shortener, Amzn.to.
3. Making use of your Affiliate Links for buying/selling items
Amazon states very clearly that Affiliates are not to use affiliate link for commercial use or purchasing items and resale. So better make sure you don’t do any shopping using your affiliate link.
4. Creating multiple accounts for multiple websites
To limit spam and control the affiliate accounts, Amazon does not allow for an Affiliate to operate more than one account, even if you have multiple websites to manage. So beware and don’t go around creating more than one account. Even though it’d be pretty sweet to have individual accounts to keep track of individual websites and their earnings.
5. Using Amazon User Reviews as your website’s reviews
In clear cut words, Amazon forbids you to make use of Amazon’s user reviews as your own; that is to show them on your website passing them as your own. If you do so, you will most definitely get banned.
6. Use links on sexually explicit and/or violent sites
Amazon restricts putting up links from sexually explicit and/or violent sites. Doing so you will face immediate ban by Amazon. They emphasize on this point greatly.
7. Defying Amazon’s Trademark Policy
You cannot use Amazon’s trademarks in your site domain name or anywhere where Amazon believes you are violating their trademark rights. And believe me when I say that Amazon has a lot of trademarks, any of which you can be violating without even knowing.
8. Comparing prices of products on your site
Believe me or not, but discussing product prices on your sites and listing them down will actually end up with a ban on your Amazon Affiliate account. So it is smarter to link your products with prices on Amazon so that the users are aware of the new and old prices etc.
9. Using Affiliate Links to promote sites with copied content
Amazon frowns upon any sites that promote content that is not original or does not meet their quality standards. So, if you are promoting a site with copied content using Amazon, you will face a ban and also a penalty generated by Google itself.
10. Using paid advertisements to generate traffic on your sites
Making use of paid ads to make your site more successful is also dangerous while also beneficial. Buying ads to increase traffic on your site will get you banned very fast! So avoid doing that.
Example of a Site That Follows all Amazon Affiliate Program Terms
For example you can check 10Reports blog which is based on reviewing computer technology, it is free from all mistakes and errors that can land an Amazon Affiliate with a ban on their site. Their Affiliate Disclosure page, Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages are correctly drafted and on point. And they don’t believe in using paid ads to generate traffic on their blog which is not only frowned upon by Amazon but also inconvenient to many users.
On a side note, if you are a regular shopper who likes to buy various products online via sites that are supported by Amazon Affiliates programmed, you should make sure that the sites you are using to shop online are not making any of these mistakes.
People generally do not pay attention to such things, therefore when things go sideways and the sites you frequent have landed a ban you can’t shop on them anymore which is inconvenient, as you may have gotten used to them or maybe those sites are your favorite. Looking out for such errors can help your favorite online shopping sites/blogs prevent being banned by Amazon.
Guest Post Submitted by 10Reports. Edited and published by editorial board.
I think we all should try to avoid these 10 amazone affiliate mistakes. Thank you so much for this article.
if we can’t use ppc ads, so we can only bring traffic through google search? how to grow traffic ? please help me